Transport relates to both the quality of service and accurate delivery of electronic data. Specifically, transport involves the accurate delivery of data from a source to a target location. High availability relates to a computer system or component thereof that remains operational in spite of a component failure in the system. Thus, the present invention relating to transport high availability generally refers to systems and methods that maintain the accurate delivery of electronic data over a computer network in the event of a failure of a component within the network.
Some prior systems periodically back up electronic data on a regular or “snapshot” basis, such as a nightly backup of electronic data stored on a system. Such systems capture the electronic data that are located on a server at a particular time, for example, at the end of a business day. However, while these systems and methods may backup electronic data that remains at a specific location, such as text documents or database files specific to a local company site, such prior systems and methods fail to capture electronic data that only temporarily resides on a server as it is transmitted from a source location to a target location on a network. An example of such data includes email messages or other electronic data that pass through several servers on a network as the data is sent or transmitted from a source server to a target server. Since transmitted data may be stored at a particular server for only a fraction of a day before being forwarded to another server and deleted, a nightly download would not adequately backup the electronic data in the event a component fails in the network.
Accordingly, a system for transport high availability is desired to address one or more of these and other disadvantages.